Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

Career highlights? I had two – I got an intentional walk from Sandy Koufax and I got out of a rundown against the Mets.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

Earth might one day soon resemble the planet Venus.

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.

Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.

Miracles come in moments. Be ready and willing.

I still enjoy watching a batter successfully cross home plate, but nothing thrills me more than seeing the Holy Spirit at work in hearts as the Gospel is carried into stadiums, across the airwaves, and around the world.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

Hey, I think it’s easy for guys to hit .300 and stay in the big leagues. Hit .200 and try to stick around as long as I did; I think it’s a much greater accomplishment. That’s hard.

The brain is wider than the sky.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.

I signed a very modest $3,000 bonus with the Braves in Milwaukee. And my old man didn’t have that kinda money to put out.

In George Bush you get experience, and with me you get – The Future!

Unlike many of its European neighbors, Britain shares many of America’s financial traits.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

Baseball is a universe as large as life itself, and therefore all things in life, whether good or bad, whether tragic or comic, fall within its domain.

Even though the risks of death are higher driving than flying, many people would rather drive simply because they feel they have more control driving. The facts are that only a few hundred people die a year flying, and 44,000 are killed a year driving.

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.

Baseball hasn’t forgotten me. I go to a lot of old-timers games and I haven’t lost a thing. I sit in the bullpen and let people throw things at me. Just like old times.

You might say that Lyndon Johnson is a cross between a Baptist preacher and a cowboy.

Cobb is a prick. But he sure can hit. God Almighty, that man can hit.

Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated.

Particularly Instagram, people look like they have a much better life than they really do. People basically seem like they are way better-looking than they really are, and they are way happier-seeming than they really are.

My life is not unlike Truman’s. I can’t go anywhere.

French fries kill more people than guns and sharks, yet nobody’s afraid of French fries.

The biggest thrill a ballplayer can have is when your son takes after you. That happened when my Bobby was in his championship Little League game. He really showed me something. Struck out three times. Made an error that lost the game. Parents were throwing things at our car and swearing at us as we drove off. Gosh, I was proud.

Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?

If I had to choose a superhero to be, I would pick Superman. He’s everything that I’m not.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

In 1962 I was named Minor League Player of the Year. It was my second season in the bigs.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

I had been playing for a while, and I asked Louisville Slugger to send me a dozen flame treated bats. But when I got it, I realized they had sent me a box of ashes.

There is only a finger’s difference between a wise man and a fool.

Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham.

When I looked at the third base coach, he turned his back on me.

As a Western, ‚The Magnificent Seven‘ was a pretty good film. I don’t think it was as interesting or as multi-faceted as ‚Seven Samurai.‘

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about.

Where would I be without baseball? Who am I without baseball?

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality – we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

‚Kiss Land‘ is like a horror movie.

February is always a bad month for TV sports. Football is gone, basketball is plodding along in the annual midseason doldrums, and baseball is not even mentioned.

Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don’t run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

Madonna and I are very different. Just saying. We’re very different. I wouldn’t make that comparison at all, and I don’t mean to disrespect Madonna: she’s a nice lady, and she’s had a fantastic, huge career – biggest pop star of all time.

The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.

I’ve done a number of Super Bowl ads. And that is the best advertising of the year. That is when people realize they’re going to be compared directly against other ads.

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

I think the word rich is all relative.

Apple’s market share is bigger than BMW’s or Mercedes’s or Porsche’s in the automotive market. What’s wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?